Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

"With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable"



Friday 2 November 2007

On the improve

24 days to go and the focus for me is to build on my aerobic base. As the 2 charts below show its "on the improve".
















The problem with Cyclingpeaks charts is that they are power based and any workout not attached to a power metre has to be estimated or ignored. Since I've chosen to "ignore", the chart gives the idea I'm alot worse than I am. The big gap just left of the current readings is comprised of the Worlds races and 4 days off the bike...I'm just not sure how to estimate the work done at the Worlds.

At the end of our lunch time meeting at work yesterday I reminded everyone I was 3 weeks out from a big event and requested that anyone feeling even slightly ill keep well away from me. Then had to endure major comments about my risky behaviour since I'd ridden to work and not only did I have to fight the feral traffic on the way home, I had to fight the feral traffic in the pouring rain. Memo to self..check forecast before riding to work next time.

Since it was raining quite hard I opted to take the bike path home..something I normally avoid due to the presence of very young kids on bikes, day-glo wobblers weaving everywhere and dog walkers with Rover on an invisible extendable lead stretching across the path. This time the weather ensured the path was empty and wonder of wonders since I'd last ridden it, it had been upgraded to a cement path which meant I could successfullydo my work out on it, rather than having to hop on the trainer once I got home.

Weather forecasting here in Melbourne has an element of safety attached to it since we are a city that has "4 seasons in one day" but I had hoped that in choosing November 26th as THE day, it would be guaranteed to be warm..mid 20's I reckoned would be good. Currently we're running at high teens, windy and wet so I'm going to contact an Orienteering acquaintance of mine who works at our Bureau of Meterology, to check on what sort of weather is expected for 26/11 (Tuesday's test ride was, from memory, at about 15-16 degrees C).

6 comments:

Rich Gift Of Lins said...

Fit a bell for the bike path and be really safe! Did you have an HRM for the other workouts? I have estimated power (ignoring efforts above L4) from HRM files quite successfully in order to populate my CTL scores.

Liz said...

Hi Colin..I don't think I could bring myself to put a bell on my custom made Teschner bike!!! I call out..ring ring!
Some of my workouts are with a polar HRM..how do you do the calculation?

Rich Gift Of Lins said...

Easy! Divide your HR file up into time spent in each zone ~ roughly, e.g. 10mins at L2 and 60mins at L4. L2 is 65% ave and L4 is 100% ave.

L2 TSS is (10*65*65)/6000 = 7TSS
L4 TSS is (60*100*100)/6000 = 100TSS

For L2, L3 and longer L4 efforts your estimated TSS won't be far out.

Liz said...

tnx colin..much appreciated..some of us are just techno dunces and need all the help we can get!!

Lawrence said...

Maths!?! Yikes!! cyclist reverts to duathlon days and RUNS!!!!!!

Liz said...

perish the thort..just back to the dark side and sans powermeter..y'know HRM/PE